Does the Perceived Access to Social Protection Mechanisms Strengthen Adaptive Capacity? A Global Study of Flood-Prone Communities

To cope with the growing risks brought by climate-related disasters, it’s crucial that communities strengthen their adaptive capacity. In this context, social protection plays a key role and should be seen as an essential part of the policy response. This study investigates whether perceived access to formal and informal social protection mechanisms influences changes in climate adaptive capacity over time across flood-prone communities worldwide. Using data from the Flood Resilience Measurement for Communities (FRMC) tool, we analyse responses from over 200 communities. Adaptive capacity indicators were constructed from baseline and endline data, and regression models were applied to assess the role of different perceived social protection mechanisms to changes in adaptive capacity. Results show that perceived access to loans is consistently associated with improved adaptive capacity, particularly in communities recently affected by floods. Perceived formal support from governments or NGOs benefits lower-adaptive capacity communities but has diminishing returns in higher-capacity contexts in the baseline. Perceived informal support from family members shows no influence. These findings underscore the importance of financial mechanisms and context-specific strategies in designing social protection systems that effectively foster climate resilience.